Classes 1-14 are all human. You might notice that all classes with the exception of Amazon and Pirate are arranged in tiers of 3 similar classes. 1-3 would be Middlerealmian fighters, 4-6 Middlerealmian Mages, 7-9 Middleaventurian "low lifes", 10-12 Tulamidian Mages.

I've now translated all the description texts from the screenshots.
Have fun

Warrior

He is the allegorical hero, much appreciated by common people and bound to an elaborate code of honor. He received his training [and education] at an academy. There he not only learnt how to use heavy armor and weapons, but also how to dance at court [not only literally].

Advantages and disadvantages:
- Bonus - Swords [probably meaning he'll have to pay less exp to increase his sword-talent]

Bow Hunter

The Bow Hunter is a ranged fighter who received his training in the army. He fights enemies from afar with aimed, unerring shots. In his light armor he is fast and agile. He also learnt the basics of the bowyers craft [bowying?] in his training.

Advantages and disadvantages:
- Sense of distances
- Malus: Close Combat [probably meaning it will cost him more exp to increase his close.combat weapon talents]

Soldier

The soldier didn't enjoy the lengthy training of a warrior's academy, but got to know the rough life in one of Aventuria's armies. He fights masterfully with the two-handed sword and puts the fear of the gods into his enemies. Etiquette is alien to him, but he knows how to orient himself in an unknown city.

Advantages and disadvantages:
- Malus: Lore talents [Raising lore-talents, such as street knowledge or magic lore, will be more expensive for him - again: probably]

Battlemage

The battlemage received his training [and education] at the Kampfseminar Andergast [Fightingseminar Andergast - one of Aventuria's mage-academies] - a practically oriented acadademy specialized in training conjuring fighters. He fells his enemies with a flame-lance [a confined jet of pure elemental fire], but he is also able to defend himself with his staff.

The healing mage received his training [and education] at the Donnerbach [Thunderbrook] academy, an academy with an elven orientation that mainly trains healing mages. Healing mages are no good fighters, but compensate this with their pronounced art of healing and their enhancement spells for party members [buffs].

Advantages and disadvantages:
- High astral [mana] regeneration
- Malus: Endurance [probably meaning he'll have less from the beginning, maybe it will also be more expensive for him to raise his endurence attribute - though I don't think so]

Charlatan

The charlatan has behind him a failed training at one of the mage academies and cannot resort to the full repertoire of an Aventurian mage. He is an excellent dazzler [illusionist] and skillfully uses his dexterity. His charisma is pronounced and he can fight acceptably with a rapier.

The strayer grew up in the streets of the city. He is a true survivalist [an artist in getting by], in the wilderness though he seems completely lost. The strayer can quickly and accuratly assess people. His strengths lie in his persuasiveness and charisma, his favored weapon is the rapier.

Advantages and disadvantages:
- Good-looking
- Malus: Nature talents

Burglar/Housebreaker

The Horasian burglar is the professed mastercraftsman among the income-redistributers [puh]. He steals because he smells a challenge and loves risk. Picking locks and disabling traps is his profession, his perception and sense for danger are pronounced like no one else's.

Advantages and disadvantages:
- Bonus: Haggling
- Sense of danger

Thief/Pickpocket

The thief is proud of his Phex-favored craft [Phex is the god of Thiefs and Traders alike - the most money-focused god, if you will]. He is agile and nimble and relieves the richmen's pockets of their purses. In order to not end up in a dungeon-cell he knows how to get arround in the city and he also knows how to lay a trap or two to shake off chasers.

Advantages and disadvantages:
- Bonus: Dagger
- Bonus: Perception

Elemental Mage

The elemental mage received his training [and education] at the 'Pentagramma Academy Rashdul'. There he learned how to control the elements and how to summon mighty companions of fire from the elemental sphere [plane].

The metamage engages in the manipulation of spell-matrixes, making him one of the most potent necromancers in Aventuria. Metamages like to linger in their laboratories and only leave themfor a chance of finding even mightier spells.

The alchemist is a highly educated and versatile scholar of a secret science. He travels the lands in search of new recipies and hidden knowledge. At the same time alchemists know a bit of magic. They mainly fight with clubs.

Advantages and disadvantages:
- Bonus: Alchemy

Pirate

He decided to leave his ship to seek out his fortune far away from his home. He is a rough companion with enormous strength, which he knows how to use fighting with Skraja [a relatively small, double-sided axe] and shield. He is practiced in using throwing weapons. Etiquette is alien to him, in high-society circles he feels out of place.

The amazon is part of the women who have dedicated their life to the godess Rondra. They idolize discipline and obedience as their highest virtues. They don't rely on heavy armor, they emphasize agility. This is mirrored in their characteristic tightly fitting armor.

The ranger is a survivalist [survival artist]. As with all elves, he is born with magic talents; in handling bow and arrow he is nearly unbeatable. The ranger avoids human settlements and their inhabitants. What he does not know about the wilderness isn't noteworthy.

The elven fighter is mainly profficient in close combat. He knows how to handle a bow, but it plays a less important role. Elves call him 'Thara', like the deadly weapon in his hands which he uses to fight. Like all elves he doesn't feel comfortable among humans.

-- “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

The dwarven mercenary stands out for his love of fighting and wearing a well-worn chain mail. The favored weapons of this gruff fellow are simple axes or maces, in combination with a shield. He is an excellently trained as well as a fearless and fearsome fighter.

Advantages and disadvantages:
- Bonus: Axes and maces

Dwarven Sapper

The sapper is one of the most versatile mercenaries. He is familiar with axes and maces of all kinds and knows how to forge all kinds of useful items. Characteristic for him is the long leather apron and under it a chain mail, which he wears like a second skin.

Advantages and disadvantages:

Bonus: Blacksmith
Malus: Ranged combat

Dwarven Prospector

The prospector is a well trained fighter with a good grasp of hunting and rare plants. The wilderness is his home and he has learnt how to defend himself with crossbow and hatchet. He fears neither death nor evil spirits and often seems quite odd to humans.

In past RoA games, the Streuner was simply called Rogue (and She-Rogue).

Otherwise, great translations!

-- "Mystery is important. To know everything, to know the whole truth, is dull. There is no magic in that. Magic is not knowing, magic is wondering about what and how and where." ~ Cortez, from The Longest Journey

-- “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

The "deeper meaning" is that these "classes" are actually called "professions" in the German-language rule system.

The word "profession" doesn't have exactly the same meaning than its English-language counterpart, but goes into that directin. The German lean-word "profession" is rarely used, normally. It rather means that someone takes his or her (English-word) "profession" rather seriously.

Well, in short, these "classes" are nonexistent in the German-language edition of the rule-set, but they are called "professions" in it.

This goes for every race, but for Drakensang, most sub-professions have been omitted. There are rather main professions there.

If you look at the first picture , you can see the race (human), in this case the "Mittelländer" (from the "Middle Realm", so to say), with the profession of a military man, and the small heads on this picture repesent the variations or sub-professions.

This is how I understood this.

In the pen & paper rule-set, there are many, many more "professions" available, and several of them wouldn't work in this game.

That's why there are so many (partly due to fan demand).

-- “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

The fans would have wanted a "real" character-creation, like in the P&P. Where you first choose your race (there are several human races and a bunch of non-humans), then your culture and last but not least your profession (which may come in the form of several sub-professions, like Alrik pointed out).

Of course this model was not feasible for the CRPG, this is why the developers chose to include 20 predefined Race/Culture/Profession combinations. If you look at the screenshots you can even see the exact combinations they chose (Rasse/Kultur/Profession - should be self-explanatory).
They also chose to leave out overly exotic possibilities which you would have had in the P&P, like witches, druids, academics, tatoo-artists (professions); like Achaz (lizard-people), orcs or goblins (races); like Utulu, Fountlandian (Cultures).

As should be apparrent by now, in the P&P you have virtually hundreds of thousands of combination possibilities.

Concerning the skills/special maneuvers:

You'll have to learn them by spending exp, the same mechanism you raise attributes or talents. There is nothing that automatically gets raised when you level up. You have to raise (and learn) everything manually (theoretically, of course the PC-Game gives you the possibility to do it automatically for you).
Of the special combat maneuvers most aren't passive, so you'll have to activate them manually (with a short-cut, for example), but some are passive.

I suppose that "agressive stance" and "defensive stance" you'll only have to activate once (e.g. at the beginning of a fight).

But there might also be completely passive skills, like armor accustomization (which I suppose will be in the game - though I don't know), which generally lowers the encumburance that armor may cause.

For example a piece of armor might have a armor rating of 3 and an encumburance stat of 3 (normally they are more or less the same).
If you had "armor accustomization I" this piece of armor would only cause an encumburance of 2. If you had "armor accustomizadtion II" it would only have an encumburance of 1.

An armor rating of 3 would mean that if somebody did 8 hit-points, this would be lowered by 3, and the attacked person would only receive 5 damage points.
An encumburance rating menas that one's movement speed is lowered. A normal humanoid in The Dark Eye has a speed of 8 (meters/second). This gets lowered by one point per encumburance point, so if you wear a helmet with encumburance 1 and an armor with encumburance 2, you'd only be able to move with an average speed of 5 meters/second.

(Elves have a speed of 9, dwarves 7, and if your agility is higher than… I thing 15… then your speed rating also goes up one point.)

You can get an idea of how "levelling up" (although it isn't bound by levels at all, if you've received exp, you can immediatly spend it) works, if you look at this screenshot.

On the top left you can see that this character already has 3383 experience points.
She also has 170 "Raising points", which means she must have spent 3213 points (3383 - 170) already. She is level (Stufe) 6 (although that doesn't mean much).

In brackets next to the attributes and talents you can see how much it would cost to raise these by one point. It would, for example, cost 380 points to raise courage (Mut / MU) by one point to 14. Attributes are very expensive to raise.
Talents not so much. Raising sneaking ("Schleichen", the first one) from 6 to 7 would only cost 33 exp.

Good RPGs are rare, so I'm certainly getting this as soon as it is released. Whether or not it turns out great remains to be seen (story, choices/consequences and so on have a lot to say, and it's hard to get any info on that untill it's released), but it's definetly worth a shot. Looks good so far.

Well, the whole class/race thing was never exactely DSA's strongest points. The first few editions did not even separate class from race and even today some of the classes doesn't seem to make much sense to me, but then again I'm used to the WFRP class system which is kinda awsome. I think it was a rather wise decision from the developers of Drakensang to give people a selection of archetypes they can choose from. It makes things easier for people who don't know much about DSA or just want to get into the game as fast as possible.

Originally Posted by ulixes
She is level (Stufe) 6 (although that doesn't mean much).

In earlier editions of the system the Stufe mattered much more, because you could only distribute points for skills when you levelled up.

This has been eleminated more or less because you can distrubite the points *at any time*.

The discussions about the next edition I read hint at the system dropping the levels altogether (at least that's how I understood it).

Originally Posted by Maylander
All I really want to know at this point is: When will it be out ?

No idea. Germany is the primary market for this game.

Originally Posted by Ionstormsucks
I think it was a rather wise decision from the developers of Drakensang to give people a selection of archetypes they can choose from. It makes things easier for people who don't know much about DSA or just want to get into the game as fast as possible.

Very much so, yes.

-- “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)